If you don’t define yourself for yourself then you will be crushed into other's fantasies of you and eaten alive
Interpretation
Self-definition is crucial to avoid being shaped by others' expectations.
This quote emphasizes the importance of self-identity and personal autonomy. Audre Lorde warns that if individuals do not take the initiative to define who they are, they risk being molded by the perceptions and fantasies of others, which can lead to a loss of individuality and a sense of being overwhelmed by external pressures.
In practice
This quote can inspire students in a graduation speech about embracing their own identities.
The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.
There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.
There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.
I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.
I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.
There's always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself - whether it's Black, woman, mother, dyke, teacher, etc. - because that's the piece that they need to key in to. They want to dismiss everything else.
But they never notice the following inconsistency: this so-called worst-case event, when it happened, exceeded the worst case at the time.
It is God's earth out of which man is taken. From it he has his body. His body belongs to his essential being. Man's body is not his prison, his shell his exterior, but man himself. Man does not "have" a body; he does not "have" a soul; rather he "is" body and soul. Man in the beginning is really his body. He is one. He is his body, as Christ is completely his body, as the Church is the body of Christ
We need not throw away 200 years of American jurisprudence while we fight terrorism. We need not choose between our most deeply held values, and keeping this nation safe.
A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere even the careless, the most stupid thinker.
The only means of ridding man of crime is ridding him of freedom.
To make marijuana against the law is like saying God made a big mistake.
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